The Environment in Focus

Lynda Mettee lives in a house built high up on risers on a slender peninsula called Swan Point that sticks out into the Chesapeake Bay east of Dundalk, in Baltimore County.

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My wife and I were strolling late at night in Fells Point, near Baltimore’s waterfront when we heard an odd sound coming from the trees in Thames Street Park. A neighbor of the park, Rob Baumann, came walking along with his dog. He smiled at, what to him, were familiar noises.

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Driven in part by the coronavirus recession and reductions in driving and air travel, the number of oil and gas drilling rigs operating in the U.S. has plummeted by 70 percent over the last year, falling to a record low since World War II.

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The global plastics industry is booming, adding trash to our oceans and greenhouse gases to our atmosphere. Plastics production has grown even during the corona virus recession because of the increased need for disposable gloves, cups, and bags.

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It was just after dawn when I set out paddling in my kayak to find nature in one of the least natural places on Earth.

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Thomas RaShad Easley grew up in an apartment in an urban neighborhood in Birmingham, Ala. But he learned to love nature, in part because his grandparents cultivated a lush garden amid the concrete and blacktop.

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In his documentary titled “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” filmmaker Ken Burns described why parks and wildlife preservers – lands owned by the public – are really an American invention.

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The recent legal actions by the attorneys general of Maryland and Virginia against the Trump Administration’s EPA over the Chesapeake Bay cleanup are evidence that the landmark 2010 Bay restoration agreement has failed.

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This is the call of a meadowlark. (Sound of meadowlark plays). This is an upland sandpiper. And this excitable fellow is a burrowing owl. (Hooting sound of owl)
What they have in common is that they are among more than 5,000 species of birds whose survival is threatened because of the expansion of industrial-style, modern agriculture around the world. Populations of meadowlarks, for example, have fallen by 71 percent since 1966. And it’s not just birds. Farming and development have reduced the population of all wild animals – mammals, birds, fish, and amphibians -- by more than half since 1970.

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The Attorneys General of Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia filed a notice of intent to sue the Trump Administration’s EPA on Monday over its failure to enforce a landmark Chesapeake Bay cleanup agreement signed in 2010.

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